Leslie Rice also happens to be the name of an award-winning Australian artist, whose more famous works include paintings of decapitated and dismembered people. The paintings feature a decapitated head on a plate, body parts strewn about and morbid-looking works depicting death or pieces of human corpses.

It is not known whether this artist was the inspiration for Speaks’ alias or whether the painter is known by Speaks at all.

On Friday night, WGNO e-mailed the images of the paintings to the head investigator in the Lockhart murder, Detective Steve Saucier of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office.

Saucier said the images are “undeniably intriguing”, but that the sheriff’s office learned Speaks stole the name from someone he knew in his home state of North Carolina to commit identity fraud.

Perhaps it’s just another creepy coincidence.

Also, Jailed murder suspect Margaret Sanchez’s TV interview on ABC’s Final Witness this week has the attention of her interrogators.

Her previously recorded take on old New Orleans friend, Addie Hall, being killed and dismembered six years ago caused detectives to compare it to last month’s murder of Lockhart , who was found in pieces last month on beaches in Mississippi after leaving the French Quarter strip club where she worked.

The last people seen with the 23-year-old dancer, Sanchez and Speaks aren’t formally charged with murder but are prime suspects in her killing.

As for Sanchez’s TV interview on her butchered friend in 2006, Saucier says the show is now part of Lockhart’s murder investigation. He said Thursday that the sheriff’s office had requested from ABC and independent producers all raw footage and interviews used to create the program which aired Wednesday on WGNO.

“We can’t overlook these similarities as being a mere coincidence though it may be”, Saucier said.

Speaks is in federal custody and is expected to be delivered to the Surry County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina on charges of failing to verify his sex offender status. He and Sanchez were arrested June 12th in Tangipahoa as suspects in Lockhart’s murder. Sanchez remains jailed in Tangipahoa.